As I sit and write this letter to our daughters -- our future leaders -- I recognize that women are increasingly visible in leadership roles. However we have a long way to go to achieve equality, particularly at the most senior levels of leadership.

A recent study found that millennials are attracted to online resources to help them manage their money and answer their banking needs. Banks have been listening to what their younger consumers are after and changing how they can offer their services.

Another interesting finding from the poll was that students are significantly more anxious about taking on debt than their parents think they are (69 per cent versus 60 per cent), and they're more worried about having enough money to cover expenses (71 per cent of students versus 57 per cent of parents).

Many people are unaware that "coercive tied selling" is illegal in Canada. According to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, "This means that banks are not allowed to unduly pressure or coerce you into a product or service from their affiliates as a condition for obtaining another product or service from them."

Check the list below to see if your four-digit password is on this list, and if so, please change it to something more random, secure and less crackable. After all, there is a pool of 10,000 different combinations available from which to select a 4-digit pin and yet the same passwords are repeatedly selected by the general population.

In a town perhaps previously best known for providing the dirt that allowed Boston to double in size by filling in its swampy Back Bay there is a startling banking counter-revolution underway. Led by long-established but newly-rejuvenated Needham Bank and involving not only that town but those nearby, community banking is reclaiming market share.

Canada's banks stayed afloat during the Great Recession without a real need for the taxpayer's life jacket, whereas American banks either sank or needed the taxpayer's life boat. But what is less known about our financial system is that its merits go beyond its resolve over the last decade.

Thankfully most of us will never experience being threatened with death or blackmailed by our bosses.
However, many of us could relate to Kevin Spacey's one beady eye on the clock and another on a closed-circuit video revealing precisely when his employees arrived at work through the company parking garage. Spacey's David Harken was driven not only by his addictions -- to power, humiliation, $1,400 suits and early-morning highballs -- but also by a century-old workplace myth: you have to physically watch the people you lead to determine whether they're being productive.

Over the last year, for example, there has been an increase in the number of firms that are offering Private Investment Council or Private Investment Pools. Why? Because people are foolish enough to believe that these things are special. What a load of crap!

The federal minister of Finances, Mr. Jim Flaherty, made public comments and exerted pressures for Manulife Bank to withdraw its offer for a five-year-fixed mortgage rate of 2.89 per cent. NPD leader Thomas Mulcair accused Mr. Flaherty of using his position of power inappropriately. I couldn't have said it better myself.

When I'm lecturing to students I like to ask them how much a $100 pair of shoes costs. The most common answer is $100 plus tax. Would you believe me if told you it could be as much as $1,376.46? As a 20-year-old, if you convinced yourself not to buy the shoes, and invested it instead -- with an assumed rate of return of 6 per cent -- you'd have $1,376.46 by the time you were 65 years old.

I recently trained a group of directors and CEOs from the banking and agricultural sectors in Texas and Arizona. We discussed mutual expectations on the part of the board and management. The following represents the output of these discussions, which could apply to a variety of boards.

The leading promoter of Sharia banking in Canada, UM Financial Inc. has gone into receivership. The consequences of this bankruptcy may effect thousands of Muslim homeowners. The troubles at UM Financial did not come overnight